Static digital images can now be produced from a wide variety of sources, including digital cameras and scanners. The ease of production, and relative ease of storage, of such images means that there can be many of them available. This has led to the recognition of the growing problem of holding the viewers attention when viewing an image. In an attempt to address this problem, it has been proposed to use so-called “rostrum camera” techniques, which produce a series of images from a static image by zooming in on a part of the image, zooming out to the original image and then zooming in on a different part of the original image.
A method of automating rostrum camera techniques for static digital images has been proposed in our co-pending United Kingdom patent application number GB 0104589.7 the content of which is incorporated herein by reference. The method disclosed therein is used automatically to determine areas of interest in the image to avoid the requirement for a manual selection thereof by the user. It is concerned with viewing a single image by producing a moving sequence of images thereover. It can pan, zoom or fade between images, all of which are forms of moving viewpoints. This is referred to as a rostrum path, whether produced manually or automatically.
However, a viewer often wishes to view a plurality of separate digital images. In this case, as shown in FIG. 1 of the drawings that follow, from a first static digital image 2, an object 4 (here a person's face)is selected (whether manually or automatically) on which to zoom and a first zoomed image 6 is displayed by the system zooming in on the object 4. The zoomed image 6 thus shows a part (not being the whole) of the first static digital image 2. To move to a second static digital image 8, the method is first to zoom out from the first zoomed image 6 to first static digital image 2 (shown as 10 in FIG. 1 to illustrate the sequence though it is identical to image 2), to replace first static digital image 2 with second digital static image 8. The view may then zoom in to a part of the second static digital image 8 as a second zoomed image 12 on an object (house 14) selected manually or by an automatic process.
Such a transition between images can be arbitrary, aesthetically unappealing and slow. The transition from image 6 to image 12 is via two full-view images (8 and 10) and the two zoomed images are unconnected conceptually and visually.